The Enchanter's Forest

The Enchanter's Forest

Alys Clare

www.hodder.co.uk

THE HAWKENLYE MYSTERIES

Fortune Like the Moon

Ashes of the Elements

The Tavern in the Morning

The Chatter of the Maidens

The Faithful Dead

A Dark Night Hidden

Whiter than the Lily

Girl in a Red Tunic

Heart of Ice

The Enchanter’s Forest

Copyright © 2007 by Alys Clare

First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK Company

The right of Alys Clare to be identified as the Author of the

Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means

without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise

circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which

it is published and without a similar condition being imposed

on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious

and any resemblance to real persons, living

or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title

is available from the British Library

Epub ISBN 9781444716719

Book ISBN 9780340923863

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

An Hachette UK Company

338 Euston Road

London NW1 3BH

www.hodder.co.uk

For Alex Bonham,

with my grateful thanks for her infectious enthusiasm

and all her hard work

Cytharizat cantico

dulcis philomena,

flore rident vario

prata iam serena,

salit cetus avium

silve per amena,

chorus promit virginum

iam gaudia millena.

The sweet nightingale

sings like a lyre;

the flower-filled meadows

are laughing for joy;

a flight of birds soars up

from the enchanted forest;

the maidens’ chorus

promises a thousand delights.

Carmina Burana;

cantiones profanae

Author’s translation

Prologue

Spring Equinox 1195

In the forest the new season was flourishing. The air was loud with birdsong as male chaffinch, blackbird, thrush and warbler each proclaimed their territory and advertised for a mate. A recent heavy shower had increased both the intensity of the light and the sweet spring smells of tender young grass and unfolding leaf. Nature’s power was all but tangible and the very trees seemed to rejoice.

     In stark contrast, the young man who was slowly and dejectedly making his way from the deep heart of the forest back out to its fringes could not have been more miserable. Today was his fifth trip to the interior of the Great Wealden Forest and he had been on the same hopeless mission that had taken him there the previous times. He’d heard that, a few years back now, some men out poaching had come across a treasure trove of coins and, despite the fact that he knew full well what had become of them – those who related the tale dwelled with fascinated ghoulishness on
that
part of the story – his greed and his need had overcome his fear. Five times now he had managed to master his terror as he had scrabbled and dug in what had seemed to be likely places; five times he had failed.

     The trouble was that he never really stayed in there long enough. He guessed that if there
was
treasure to be found, it would be in the secret, dark areas that lay hidden miles away from the outside world, where they said mysterious beings lived who shunned mankind, preferring to keep to their own sort, their own ways, even their own religion. They also said that these strange people did not take kindly to outsiders poking their noses in where they were not wanted. Most certainly they would not approve of someone scratching about beneath the roots of those vast and majestic oaks of incredible antiquity searching for loot. Look at what had happened to those wretched poachers  . . .

     Each time he had found a likely spot and taken up his mattock to break the soil and start digging, initially the hope of finding what he was so frantically looking for would carry him for a while, fuelling him with nervous energy and desperate optimism. This time, he would think to himself, this time I’m going to strike lucky, and he would try so hard to make himself believe it that he could almost see his eager hands gathering up piles of glittering gold coins, feeling their wonderful weight in his palms and watching with fascinated eyes as they fell through his fingers.

     Each time, sooner or later, the moment would come when he could no longer ignore the dread feeling that someone – perhaps some
thing
, for there was no sense at all of a human presence – was watching him. It would begin with a chill down his spine; a chill that, given that he was working hard enough to bring him out in a sweat, really should not have been there. Then he would think he heard some small noise, only when he stopped his digging to listen, there was no sound other than those that were natural to the forest. When he resumed his work, slowly, steadily the conviction would grow that something was creeping up on him, stealthily, silently, poised to pounce on him as he bent to his digging. He would try to ignore his fear, command himself not to let his imagination run away with him, but always, sooner or later, he would fling aside his mattock, draw his dagger and spin round to face his attacker.

     There would never be anything there.

     And the only sound would be one that nobody but he could hear, for it was the silent scream of terror that echoed inside his head.

But he had to go on trying, for if he did not find himself a source of ready wealth, he would be left with no option but to kill himself.

     It was all because of his wife.

     As he stumped along, against his volition his thoughts turned to her. She was young and clever, with an arrogant tilt to the chin that she had inherited from her French mother, along with the withering glance from those dark and captivating eyes that seemed to say,
You
? What on earth have
you
got to offer someone like me? She was also utterly lovely, with a neat little figure and round, high-set breasts that felt surprisingly heavy in his eager hands. Her power over him was absolute for if he did not do as she wished she withheld herself. Now, because she was so angry with him about the money he had given to the ransom fund, she had refused him admittance to her bed and her body for more than six months, and that last time he had caught her unawares and all but raped her. It was going to be a long time before she let him forget about that, even though at the time he would have sworn she enjoyed it as much as he did.

     What she could not – or probably would not – understand was that, over the matter of the ransom, he had had no choice. Great merciful heavens, did she think he had
wanted
to give away a quarter of his income purely to recover a king fool enough to go haring off to Outremer and allow himself to be captured on the long road home? She had accused him of hurrying to give his contribution when a wiser man might have held back hoping to be overlooked, but he had told her roughly that there was no point putting any hope in
that
naïve idea since everyone knew him and his very conspicuous wealth and his was one of the first doors on which they would come knocking. It had been better by far to appear a loyal subject who just could not wait to offer his contribution to the fund while he prayed earnestly day and night for his sovereign’s safe return.

     The real trouble was that, in his desperation to prove to her that he was a very rich man and thus the best choice as husband out of all of those who offered for her hand, he had exaggerated his wealth. Once having convinced her and her mother that his means were far more than their true value, he had been forced to go on living the lie. For the two years of their marriage he had consistently spent more than his income and, devastatingly, the ransom contribution demanded from him appeared to have been based on what he boasted of possessing rather than what he really owned.